When you declare “I give you this ring as a symbol of our vows” you never imagine taking it off the same finger that you nervously placed it on.
There was a certain awful symmetry, therefore, when I slid Helen’s ring from her finger minutes after she died, straight on to my own, joining the one she had slid on to it 17 years before.
“I’ll never take them off,” was my bedside bravado and I left both in place for some weeks. But the brutal truth is that I’m no longer married, and looking at them became a source of misery: totems of loss not love. Rather than going cold turkey, I threaded them on a gold chain around my neck.
A week later, both languish in the jewellery box. Their unaccustomed bling makes me feel more middle-aged home counties Puff Daddy than grieving widower.
My newly naked fingers provide a strange sense of freedom and relief – with immediate and ensuing guilt. Up a snake and down a ladder. However, what I hadn’t factored in (old hands smile at this) is that while a wedding ring sends out a signal of unavailability, being without one at a certain age sends a different message – what, specifically, I don’t know, but it seems to have changed my status.
I’ve stayed in many hotels in several countries. Naturally a bit shy, I have still managed to strike up cheery conversations in bars with people (the booze helps). These have included women on their own and the only weird stuff has occasionally been someone asking me to invest in a dodgy scheme or “keep in touch” despite little contact or much in common – until now.
I’m sitting in a bar at the seaside village in Yorkshire where I’ve bought a house, tapping away on my laptop and scoffing dinner. There’s a woman at the table beside me also eating alone, albeit with a large dog. I like dogs and we get chatting as hers, Charlie, takes an undue interest in my chops. Her name is Karen, in her late 30s, divorced for a few years and renting a cottage locally to spend a few days “getting her head together”. She’s slim, attractive and fun and we team up to do the pub quiz during which I learn she knows fuck-all about biology.
Later, I get up to go. “Come for a quick dog walk along the beach before you go home, Adam,” she suggests. As I say, I like dogs and, indeed, liked Karen and off we go.
In what follows, please assume that I have already attached a set of donkey ears for my ingénue idiocy. After only a few minutes, she stops, turns and kisses me full on the lips in a way that Auntie Ethel wouldn’t recognise.
Taken by surprise, I spring back – it has been a long time since I snogged anyone whom I wasn’t married to – alas in doing so I stand on a doggy paw and it all kicks off. Charlie is upset and howls. Karen is upset and scowls, I think at the rejection and the treatment of her dog. It all takes some sorting out.
When Karen hears that not only am I not a divorcee but a recent widower – I had avoided the subject – she is lovely about it and we spend a couple more chaste hours drinking, chatting and definitely not having sex in my house.
Navel gazing, I’m wondering why I hadn’t seen it coming or, if I am honest, even let it happen, given that 20 years could pass before the opportunity might arise again. Karen was lovely.
Of course, the recency of Helen’s death played a big part in slamming the brakes on but it is more than that. My emotional reserves are fully committed elsewhere with all that has happened and is happening in my life.
But if my own death bed sentiment matches that of John Betjeman’s alleged regret at not having had more sex, won’t I feel daft (dafter) about Karen? I realise now for the first time that I am not only a widower but also single. The ring – and maybe the gloves – may now be off.
Adam Golightly is a pseudonym
